From time to time we share a random video clip to fuel your travel dreams. Join us today as we visit Wenceslas Square in Prague. The main square of the Czech Republic, it is the natural assembly point when the Czech people need to raise their collective voice for change.
(Watch my complete Prague episode online for free.)
Now that I’m back from Europe, I’ll be sharing a random video clip each week to fuel your travel dreams. This week, we visit Prague and take a close look at Alfons Mucha’s Art Nouveau masterpieces.
(Watch the complete Prague episode online for free on our website.)
My friend and fellow tour guide, Honza Vihan, has been part of our tour program and the co-author of our Rick Steves’ Prague guidebook for well over a decade. Honza is brilliant (he’s a scholar at the local university), and I’m proud to have him working with our tour groups in Eastern Europe and in his hometown of Prague. Honza was our local expert and fixer for our latest TV production in Prague. He arranged for all the permissions and was great to have as my sidekick on camera.
Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha is the scribe of the Czech soul, and his magnum opus is a series of 20 huge canvases called the Slav Epic — now beautifully displayed in Prague’s museum of modern art. Inspired by this mystical work, Honza and I got caught up in the struggles and the ultimate triumph of the Czech nation.
The Czechs love their beer, their food, and their convivial beer halls. Here, Honza contemplates mixing huge doses of all three. With Honza’s help as we filmed our Prague TV show, we learned how the standard in a pub here is that they keep bringing the beer until you say definitively “Stop!” And, for many, Czech beer is the best in Europe.
One day as we were filming in Prague, it occurred to me that I was working with a guy who looked very much like an iconic American rock star. I asked Honza to pose and then showed him the album cover. Now I wish I’d asked him to take his shirt off. Do you see the resemblance?
Prague, which escaped the bombs of last century’s wars, is one of Europe’s best-preserved cities. The Czech capital’s nickname is “the golden city of a hundred spires.” And beyond its striking facades, it’s an accessible city with a story to tell and plenty to experience.
The city is filled with exuberant architecture and slinky with sumptuous Art Nouveau. With music spilling into the streets and colorful pubs serving up some of the best beer in Europe, it’s a city thriving with visitors.
I just spent a week in Prague capturing the magic of the city in a new TV show. (Producing a new series is a two-year project. And we’re just finishing things up. A dozen great new shows will debut nationally in October.)
I enjoyed touring the city with our Prague audio tour. It’s the newest tour on my free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe app, and it was a delight to simply stroll through the city with a recorded narration so I could focus my sensory energy on just being there with a steady stream of information pouring into my ears. The tour works great, but I want to tweak it by adding some Czech music during the walks so it can be played from start to finish without pausing.
Prague is the best-preserved Baroque city in Central Europe (where most big cities were bombed flat in WWII). Its castle stands high above the Vltava River, and everything seems designed to wow the visitor.
While filming in Prague, I connected with old friends (like tour organizer Lída and leader of the greatest little street orchestra in Europe, Josef). They were both featured in our first show on Prague from 12 years ago, and we brought them back for this new show. Palling around with friends like Josef and Lída, I’m reminded how connecting with real people is what carbonates your travel experience. Whether leading our tours or helping travelers with our guidebooks, it’s the people — like Lída and Josef— that make the experience rich and memorable.
While in Prague, I dropped by my son Andy’s apartment. I expected a simple little flat. But it’s a lavish top-floor-under-skylights pad with sleek furniture, an inviting hammock, and all the comforts a block behind the National Theater. He crashes here when he’s in town, and pays his rent (and a little more) by renting it out on Airbnb at other times. (For the latest on Andy’s student tour company, see wsaeurope.com.)
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s an old clock! I love this scene on the main square in Prague at the top of the hour, when everyone gathers to see the crude little mechanical show that the astronomical clock puts on.
I met my Czech friend, Lída, as a guide in Budapest back in communist times. It was 1988, and things were just starting to loosen up. Lída was leading a group from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, which was the place communists went for a wild escape and a little whiff of the West. Budapest had just opened the first McDonald’s behind the Iron Curtain, Lída was hell-bent on having a Big Mac, and I had the dubious honor of taking her there for her first American hamburger. I’ll never forget waiting an hour — in a line that stretched around the block — for American “fast” food. That evening, we went to hear Bruce Springsteen at the local stadium. With 50,000 rock fans, you could feel freedom ready to combust all around.
Even back then, Lída was crazy about dancing tango. She learned Spanish and began leading tour groups to Argentina to pursue her passion. I remember conspiring with her to mail her American dancing shoes, as the ones in communist Czechoslovakia were second-rate for a serious dancer.
We connect each time I’m in Prague, and now most of Lída’s tour guiding is at home as a mom. But she is still evangelical as ever about her tango.
In this clip, Lída describes the wild romance of dancing all night, greeting dawn in a sweaty dress and roughed-up shoes, savoring the freshness of the new day, and sleeping to the sounds of tango dancers in the studio next door. Then, as midnight approaches, she eagerly prepares to dance the night away again. While I’ve never come close to actually “dancing a night away,” listening to Lída preach the magic of tango makes me want to try.
What’s amazing about this is for an American to walk through the late-night streets of Prague with a Czech person raving about Argentinian culture. The world is a beautiful place, and I’m inspired by how this working-class Czech reaches out to embrace it. In fact, the word tango means “embrace.”
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.